Storm Warning
Milwaukee naturalist Increase A. Lapham wrote to Congress in December, 1869, with a list of shipwrecks that had occurred on the Great Lakes during the year. In all, the list included 1,914 wrecks, with a property loss of $4,100,000. (Lives lost in the shipwrecks had not been counted.) With this list he proposed the creation of a national weather service, to warn mariners of approaching storms.
“The interest of commerce and navigation, and that of humanity itself, demand that something be done,” wrote Lapham. “If we could have even a few hours’ notice of the approach of the great storms that bring these calamities upon us, much of their mischief might be avoided. “Professor J.P. Espy, in his second report on meteorology, makes the following generalizations:
“Subsequent observations have fully confirmed the truthfulness of these important deductions, which may, therefore, be set down as established facts or principles. The storm of March 22nd, 1861, is known to have occupied eight hours in passing from Dubuque on the Mississippi River to Milwaukee. “Now it is quite clear that if we could have the services of a competent meteorologist at some suitable point on the lakes, with the aid of a sufficient corps of observers, located every two or three hundred miles towards the west, and the co-operation of the telegraph companies, the origin and progress of these great storms could be fully traced; their velocity and direction of motion ascertained; their destructive force and other characteristics noted – all in time to give warnings of their probable effects on the lakes.” Congress soon acted. On November 1st, 1870, "the first systematized synchronous meteoric reports ever taken in the United States were read by the observer sergeants of the Signal Service, at twenty-four stations, and placed upon the telegraphic wires for transmission." |